Dave deBronkart

Biography

Dave deBronkart, known on the internet as e-Patient Dave, is the author of the highly rated Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook and one of the world’s leading advocates for patient engagement. After beating stage IV kidney cancer in 2007 he became a blogger, health policy advisor and international keynote speaker. An accomplished speaker in his professional life before cancer, he is today the best-known spokesman for the patient engagement movement, attending over 500 conferences and policy meetings in eighteen countries, including testifying in Washington for patient access to the medical record under Meaningful Use. Read More >

A co-founder and chair emeritus of the Society for Participatory Medicine, e-Patient Dave has appeared in Time, U.S. News, USA Today, Wired, MIT Technology Review, and the HealthLeaders cover story “Patient of the Future.” His writings have been published in the British Medical Journal, the Society for General Internal Medicine Forum, iHealthBeat, and the conference journal of the American Society for Clinical Oncology. In 2009 HealthLeaders named him and his doctor to their annual list of “20 People Who Make Healthcare Better,” and he’s appeared on the cover of Healthcare IT News and the Australian GP magazine Good Practice.

Dave’s TED Talk Let Patients Help went viral, and for years was in the top half of the most viewed TED Talks of all time with over a half million views; volunteers have added subtitles in 26 languages, indicating the global appeal of his message. In 2012 the National Library of Medicine announced that it’s capturing his blog in its History of Medicine Division, and he was the Mayo Clinic’s 2015 Visiting Professor in Internal Medicine. Read Less ^

Speaker Videos

Speech Topics

e-Patients: Empowered, Engaged, Equipped, Enabled

This is Dave's classic topic, delivered hundreds of times in 18 countries. “There’s something in your lung.” With those words Dave deBronkart began an unwanted odyssey: metastatic kidney cancer had spread silently throughout his body. Online, he read that his median survival time was 24 weeks. Laugh, Sing and Eat Like a Pig is Dave’s story in his own words: excerpts from his cancer journal and later writings as he discovered the e-patient movement – “Empowered, Engaged, Equipped, Enabled” – and became its best-known blogger, speaker, and government policy advisor. The true story of “e-Patient Dave” will inspire you and fill you with a sense that a new world is beginning, a world in which empowered patients partner with medical professionals, to truly help heal healthcare.

Patient Experience, Empowerment, Engagement: A Business Leader’s View

As co-founders of the Society for Participatory Medicine, Dave deBronkart and his doctor are international thought leaders on partnering with patients, and deBronkart authored of one of 2017’s highest-impact articles in Patient Experience Journal. With humor and insight, he’ll share lessons learned from his many patient experiences and his business career about the value of hearing customer perspectives. He’ll tie them to business outcomes in three domains: customer experience, business and social change, and cultural transformation.

A Futurist Looks at AI in Healthcare

What’s the matter with Watson? Famously, IBM Watson failed to improve cancer care, blowing hundreds of millions in the process. Dave was part of the earliest meeting that found cracks in Watson’s intellectual armor – cracks that turned out five years later to be its “cause of death.” He’ll discuss the fatal flaws that made the Jeopardy genius stumble in oncology and how we should think differently about medicine’s AI-enabled future.

The Opioid Crisis: Integrating Behavioral & Primary Care

Since 2012, Dave been a patient voice in the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ)’s project to merge behavioral and mental health into primary care, the Integration Academy. The project has renewed urgency in the era of surging opioid deaths. Beyond opioids, all behavioral and mental health problems dramatically affect the patient’s role in health and care: Who can perform any job well if they have mood problems or worse? In this extremely current time-sensitive talk, Dave will share the perspectives of the academics, clinicians and financial experts he has worked with and specific next steps providers can take.

Beating Pre-Diabetes with Apps & A Course at the Y

Type 2 diabetes is a major concern under accountable care and population health – but deBronkart living proof that change is possible. He got that diagnosis in his 60s and beat it by successfully changing his behavior, aided by e-health apps. He will share the story of how he changed his diet, walked a lot, then ran a mile (for the first time in his life!), became a 5K runner, and wound up with a cover story in a diabetes journal. As always, he tells it with humor amid the insights, and and emphasis on the patient’s perspective on a chronic diagnosis.

Patient Empowerment Around the World

From New Zealand and Australia to Switzerland, Stockholm and Dubai, Dave has the privilege of learning from audiences and sponsors in hundreds of events in 18 countries. OpenNotes, patient rights, transparency and cultural trends all vary widely, from the best (New Zealand’s avid adoption of e-health) to countries that openly advertise “Don’t google it – trust a professional!” What can we learn from the different stages of this rolling wave of social change?

Testimonials

“Magical and inspiring … As you could tell by the audience’s ovation, your presentation received an outstanding evaluation … You were the highest ranked of the Roundtable – our group tends to be harsh on outside speakers so you truly are a home run …”

- The Leadership Institute

“Hysterically, fabulously great!”

- Senior marketing executive, PWC at their Health 180 forum

“Truly one of the great programs we’ve had at Seattle Rotary and it ended with a spontaneous and much-deserved standing ovation.”

- Rotary Club of Seattle

“Your great speech went extremely well … colleagues called it superb and thought provoking.”

- Event manager

“Thank you so much for the energy and thoughtfulness that you incorporated into your talk yesterday. I was totally enthralled, again!, as were many of the staff in attendance and it could not have been a better start to our day.”

- Trillium Health Partners

“Six months later, people are still remarking on your powerful speech at our annual meeting. You tell pointed stories that rouse us to act, with some gentle humor and some not-so-gentle tragedy to remind us why what you are saying matters. You are an educator and a coach, unafraid to speak the truth but determined to use that truth to guide us all in new directions. I don’t think anyone was the same after hearing your inspirational speech.”

- The Leapfrog Group

“Dave was fantastic, loved by the audience!!”

- The Channel Company

“e-Patient Dave was the right guy at the right time for our group of experienced medical educators. His keynote address provided our audience with insights and inspiration for teaching medical students and residents about the great potential for their patients to become allies in their care. Dave showed our attendees the importance of looking beyond the traditional sources of medical information by engaging the true experts on medical conditions—our patients. He truly did get our attendees to ‘think outside the box’ and health care will benefit for him having done so. Many in our audience of medical professionals wondered why e-Patient Dave hasn’t addressed our group before.”

- Medical College of Wisconsin

“Everyone was very very enthusiastic about your talk and keeps discussing what it would mean in our field. Thanks!”

- Radboud University - Nijmegen Medical Centre

“Thank you for delivering an outstanding presentation for our annual endowed Gallman Lectureship. Your talk stimulated a great deal of interest among those who attended, including our School of Nursing colleagues and students.”